Office of the Press Secretary
(New York, New York)
_________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release October 19, 1994

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
TO "THE GOVERNORS LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE ON THE
FUTURE OF THE ECONOMY: A PARTNERSHIP FOR GROWTH"
The Imperial Ballroom
Sheraton New York

3:45 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. For the last
several months in Washington, I'm sort of disoriented. I don't
know how to react to that sort of -- (laughter) -- reception.
When I came in and you were so wonderful and warm and you were
cheering, I said to the Governor, I said, well, shall we sit down
now? He said, no, no, no. He said, that's part of your problem.
He said, let them cheer. When they boo, you sit down.
(Laughter.)

When Andrew Cuomo, who, as you know, is a
presidential appointee -- (laughter) -- wrote his father a note
and said, 10 minutes, don't be too long. And then the Governor
came up and embarrassed his son by telling you that. (Laughter.)
I wrote a note on the note. I said, Clinton's Eighth Law:
Blood is thicker than water; but the paycheck is thicker than
blood. (Laughter and applause.)

I appreciate what Governor Lundine said about my
supporting tourism in New York. I have supported it in two ways.
I brought the Democratic Convention here, and I come here; and
then when I come here, no one else can get out, so they have to
spend money. (Laughter.)

And so you know, I've gotten to feeling like a thief
when I come to New York. I have to leave in the middle of the
night so I don't inconvenience anybody. (Laughter.) But I love
to come, and I am delighted to be here. And I am delighted to be
here with so many of you.

I want to say a special word of thanks to
Congressman Schumer for his work on the crime bill. (Applause.)
Thank you, sir. And to Congressman Rangel for many things, but
especially for supporting our policy on Haiti before anybody else
was for it. (Applause.) Thank you, sir.

I appreciate the presence here of my longtime friend
Bob Reich and the other members of our administration who are
here, and those who have been here already. I'm proud that they
are a part of this.

You know, we're kind of practical people in this
administration. There are a lot of folks who work in state
government and local government and the private sector who came
to Washington. As a matter of fact, we think it's kind of
strange that Congressman Gingrich says his goal in life is to
convince you that I am the enemy of normal Americans. As
somebody pointed out to me the other day, before I came to
Washington, I was one. (Laughter.) And we tried to bring a lot
of normal Americans to Washington who would not forget that most
of what counts in this country is done somewhere else; and that
our job was to change the role of government away from this backand
-forth pendulum of either trying to solve all the problems or
sitting on the sidelines and act as if they didn't exist. We
have tried to bring a genuine constructive partnership to this
country. And I must say, it is a lot easier in New York State
and New York City because we've had good leadership to work with,
and I thank the Governor and I thank the Mayor for that.
(Applause.)

I must tell you that because I was a governor for a
good, long while, I have a sympathy for people who like to be
governor for a good, long while. (Laughter.) It's the best job
I ever had, in some ways. And I liked it because it was a real
job, dealing with real peoples and real problems and real
opportunities.

I think it makes a difference whether you have a
Partnership for Growth in New York; I really do. And whether you
think that or not is a big part of whether you will make any kind
of difference. I think it makes a difference who's in the
partnership. It makes a difference whether you have new ideas.

Long before I ever dreamed of running for President,
thought it was a practical option for me, I read the first volume
of the Cuomo Commission report. And I remember both volumes very
well -- all the ideas that they had, all the suggestions they
gave not only to states, but to our country, for dealing with
these problems. To me, that's what we ought to be doing in
government -- being catalysts for helping people take
responsibility for their own lives and get together in their
communities and reach across the lines that divide them and solve
their problems and seize their opportunities.

Twenty-one months ago I went to Washington,
determined to do what I could to restore the economy, to make our
government work for ordinary Americans again, and to empower
people to compete and win in the 21st century. After 21 months,
there's a lot we still have to do. But it is clear that America
is in better shape. We have more jobs, a lower deficit, low
inflation, a smaller federal government doing much more. We're
doing things that make government work for ordinary people --
valuing work and family with things like the family leave law;
our initiatives in welfare reform; tax credits for working
families just above the poverty line so they don't fall into the
poverty line. No one who raises kids and works 40 hours a week
should fail at either task. Immunizing all the children in the
country under the age of two by 1996.

We've made a serious assault on crime. You've
already talked about it a lot. Let me just say that a lot of the
ideas in that crime bill have been pioneered here by Governor
Cuomo, including the boot camps and the after-school programs as
prevention. It is a bill of punishment, police and prevention,
and it's a bill which will lower crime, not because of what the
federal government will do, but because of what the federal
government has empowered you to do.

One of the things that we're doing is hammering over
and over and over again on the need to implement this crime bill,
every single part of it, in the proper way. The safe schools
provision, the violence against women provision, the victims
rights provision -- a lot of things most people don't even know
are in there. If you do them all in New York, you will lower the
rate of crime and violence, not because of what the federal
government did, but because of what you will be empowered to do
with the tools that are in the bill.

We also supported, as I'm sure the Secretary of
Labor has already said, the idea of lifetime learning. The
average 18-year-old will change jobs six or seven times in a
lifetime. Many Americans today with good jobs still feel
insecure because they keep reading about big companies laying
people off and they're afraid to change jobs when they're 45 or
50. We have to make these kinds of changes the friends of
ordinary Americans, because nothing any public official can do
will repeal the laws of global economic change.

But if we are prepared to seize them and make them
our own, then all these changes will make life more exciting,
more interesting for ordinary people. The changes in work will
be an opportunity to move up, to broaden one's horizons, not to
be undermined or have your family lose their security or have
people lose their sense of self-worth. So this issue of
developing a system of lifetime learning is hugely important in
preserving the sense of optimism and strength and inner
confidence that has always been at the core of what is America's
greatness.

We also clearly are working to make the world a
safer and a more democratic and a freer place. For the first
time since the dawn of the nuclear age, Russian missiles are no
longer pointed at the United States. We have played a major role
in trying to promote peace in Northern Ireland, in the Middle
East, and, of course, in Haiti. (Applause.) We have secured an
agreement with North Korea to end that nation's nuclear program,
which is terribly important. (Applause.) And we have told Iraq
that we still believe the territorial integrity of its neighbors
are inviolate, and that it must be enabled to intimidate the
United Nations.

All of this is exhausting work, and sometimes
frustrating work in a world that is ever changing. But it is
clear to me that the rewards will go to people with vision and
energy and discipline and an upbeat outlook on the future, and
people who are not deterred.

Let me just say today the saddest moment for me in
the morning was reading about the horrible bombing in Israel.
The deaths of innocent civilians by a terrorist determined to
wreck the quest of the Arabs and the Israelis for peace in the
Middle East. If you think about the kind of disappointments and
obstacles those people have to face every day, and they're still
out there determined to sign that peace treaty with Jordan next
week, to make a comprehensive peace in the Middle East to go
forward, now those are real problems.

The American people should look at the strengths and
assets we have and say there is nothing that can stop us. Look
at strengths and assets New York has, and just say there is
nothing that can stop. This is a very big deal when you see
Americans feeling a little more pessimistic than the facts
warrant.

So I'm glad you're here. And if you don't do
anything else when you leave but to pat each other on the back
and convince yourselves that if you work together you will make a
difference, you will have done more than half of the good you can
do by showing up in the first place. (Applause.) And I hope you
believe that. (Applause.)

I want to talk very briefly about what we tried to
do here. A big reason we've had some success in the last two
years is that our administration came into office with an
economic mission. We wanted to rebuild the American Dream and
make sure every American was empowered to take advantage of it.
We had a long-term strategy as well as a short-term strategy.
And we organized the White House and the administration in a
completely different way.

They key figure in that reorganization was Bob Rubin
from New York, my National Economic Adviser. I don't even know
if he's still here. But if it hadn't been for him this whole
thing would not have worked in the proper way. We have regular,
disciplined sustained efforts involving the Secretary of the
Treasury, the Secretary of Labor, the Trade Ambassador, the
Council of Economic Advisers Chair, our Commerce Secretary, who's
clearly the most active Commerce Secretary in my lifetime. The
SBA Director, who has changed the Small Business Administration
dramatically. You now apply for an SBA loan on a one-page form
and get an answer in three days. (Applause.)

We work with all the other departments you see here
-- the Education Department is a part of our economic strategy;
the Health and Human Services Department and welfare reform is a
part of our economic strategy; HUD is a huge part of our economic
strategy. And we all work together in a disciplined way to think
about where America is going in the rest of the world, and what
America has to do at home. And we work very hard to support and
cooperate with and move forward with governors and mayors and
folks in the private sector, with whom we meet on a regular basis
and work through the major issues.

Now, if you look at the economy we confront, we all
know what the strengths of it are. We also all know we have some
problems -- 30 years of accumulated social problems; 20 years of
stagnant wages for hourly wage earners with limited educations,
increasingly buffeted by a global economy; and 12 years of an
economic theory that I don't think worked very well, except to
give us a big debt and reduced investment. Our strategy was
pretty simple and straightforward: reduce the deficit; increase
investment in education and training, new technologies and
defense conversion; increase trade and the sales of American
products and services around the world; work with business to
sell abroad when it is appropriate and proper to do so; give
special incentives to forgotten areas -- you heard the talk
earlier about the community development banks and the empowerment
zones -- so that we can get free enterprise into inner cities and
isolated rural areas; reduce the role of government wherever we
can -- reduce regulation, reduce bureaucracy, but increase the
effective leverage the federal government has, and be a good
partner. That has been our strategy.

Now, if you look at what's happened, the deficit is
going down dramatically -- it's about half of what it was when I
took office as a percentage of our national income. Trade has
increased dramatically. Since NAFTA was ratified, trade to
Mexico is up 19 percent this year. That's three times as much as
our overall trade. The GATT world trade agreement will bring
hundreds of thousands of high-wage jobs into the country, and the
Congress will adopt it, I believe, in late November. We're
selling everything from rice and apples to telephones and
Mustangs in Japan now, some of them for the first time.
(Applause.) Every country in our hemisphere but one is now a
democracy, and they're all going to meet in Miami in December and
talk about how we can increase our common wealth and prosperity
by working together. We are doing things, in short, that make a
lot of sense.

We've increased our investment in Head Start and
apprenticeships; in providing more affordable college loans to
middle-class kids. In spite of the fact that the overall deficit
has been reduced on the domestic side for the first time in 25
years this years this year, we still were able to increase our
investment in education and training. (Applause.)

Governor Cuomo mentioned in passing a very important
thing about Long Island in defense conversion. We are investing
hundreds of millions of dollars around this country to help
communities where bases have closed that need to rebuild
themselves and to help businesses that used to depend on defense
business that's not there any more. Defense spendings peaked in
1987. It peaked in 1987. In 1993 when I took office, there were
still $500 million in funds the Congress of the United States had
appropriated for defense conversion that had not been spent. We
were just leaving these companies and these communities out
there, floating in the wind with no strategy to bring them back
into the industrial base of America and the industrial future of
America.

We are changing that now, and it is very important.
If you look at New York, if you look at the economic profile of
New York, especially out on Long Island, it is criminal to walk
away from these companies that helped us win the Cold War just
because we are reaping the benefits of the Cold War by reducing
defense spending. So that's a big, big part of our economic
strategy. (Applause.)

These things are working. The community development
bank legislation I just signed, but you will see when it comes
out that we'll be able to create, we estimate, about 150,000 jobs
in very isolated inner city and rural areas just with the
community development bank authority that has already been
provided. So I am very hopeful about that.

We're also shrinking the government. It's an
unusual thing for the Democrats to be doing, but we did it
anyway. We passed bank reform legislation that was hung up for
seven years. We'll save a billion dollars a year in compliance
costs; trucking reform legislation that will save billions of
dollars a year. There are already 70,000 fewer people working
for the national government than there were on the day I became
President, and we are reducing the overall size of the government
by 270,000, and all the money's going back to you to fight crime.
That's how we're funding the crime bill. (Applause.)

Now, what are the results? The smallest federal
government since President Kennedy, three years of deficit
reduction for the first time since President Truman; 4.6 million
new jobs; more than half the new jobs this year above average
wage; more high-wage jobs this year in our economy than in the
previous five years combined; the first time in 15 years this
year American companies will sell more automobiles around the
world than Japanese companies; the first time in nine years in
the annual vote of international economists, the United States
was voted the most productive economy in the world. We are
moving in the right direction and you should be proud of that.
(Applause.)

In the state of New York, the unemployment rate has
dropped about 1.5 percent. There are over 100,000 more jobs.
Two million New Yorkers are eligible for lower interest, longer
repayment terms on their college loans; 3.1 million New Yorkers
are protected by the family leave law; you'll get another 6,100
police in the crime bill -- you've already gotten 108 within two
weeks after the crime bill was signed to New York. You've got 20
percent more funding for Head Start, and $400 million for
prisons. We are making a good beginning; we are moving forward
and we're doing it together. That's what partnerships are about.
(Applause.)

Do we have more to do? Of course, we do. And I
want to mention just some of the things that were left undone by
this Congress and some of the things we need to do in our own
partnership. We walked away from some very important
environmental legislation. And I'll just mention one -- the
Superfund bill was filibustered at the end of the Congress. The
Superfund bill to clean up toxic waste dumps was supported by the
chemical companies, the unions and the Sierra Club. I never saw
anything they were all for at the same time. There was no one in
America against the Superfund bill, except more than 40
Republican senators who didn't want any member of Congress who
happened to be in the other party, or the President to say --come
to New York and say, we're helping you to clean up toxic waste
dumps. So the poison is in the ground because the filibuster
poisoned the political atmosphere. And we have to change that.
We have to change that. (Applause.)

We walked away from three bills that will help to
change the culture of Washington -- campaign finance reform,
lobbying reform, and a bill to say -- and the businesspeople
ought to like this -- a bill to say that when Congress imposes a
requirement on private employers, the Congress has to observe the
same requirement -- live under the laws you impose on the private
sector. (Applause.) And we're going to do our best to pass all
three of those next year.

And then -- Governor Cuomo has already talked about
health care. Let me say that it was interesting to me, the day
after the health care legislation was declared over for this
session, all the papers were all of a sudden filled with articles
about how all the problems are still there -- more and more
Americans losing their right to choose their doctor; '93 census
shows that another 1.1 million Americans in working families, in
working families, lost their health insurance; the cost of health
care is still going up at well over the rate of inflation. So
this will not go away.

And I also want to say -- and I don't think I've
ever said this in public before -- but I finally made a study of
this. When I came to Washington, I came to Washington from a
state that was both low in per capita income and had a high
percentage of poor people. So I never had to worry about the
problems of New York, which is high in per capita income but has
a high percentage of poor people. I am convinced now that that
Medicaid formula is unfair to you, and I think we should change
it. And I think that's fair. (Applause.) Thank you.

You all -- you need to sit down, or you'll increase
my mail from someplace else. (Laughter.)

But it is -- I will work with Governor Cuomo, with
Mayor Giuliani, with others. We will work through this. It's
not going to be easy, but this is an error, I think, in policy
that the Congress did not make on purpose. It was something that
had not been fully accounted for. I mean, in the last couple of
years when Charlie's been trying to get more for New York, there
were people who were on purpose trying to get more for their
states. I didn't mean it like that. Rangel's eyes nearly popped
out when I said that. (Laughter.) But I think it is very
important, and we will work through it.

The other thing I want to say is something about
welfare. Now welfare reform has become like God, motherhood and
apple pie -- everybody's for it; and that's good. Franklin
Roosevelt said in the Depression that to dole out relief in this
way is a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. (Applause.) No
one ever intended for it to work this way. And I think I would
be fair in saying that no president has ever spent as much time
as I have had the opportunity to spend, because I was a governor,
actually talking with people on welfare. I find that the people
on welfare would rather us change the system than almost other
group of people in America; they're not very satisfied with it
either.

So what we have to do is to find a way that rewards
work, that requires work, but that also enables people who work
to be responsible workers and good parents at the same time.
That is very important. I sent a welfare reform bill to Congress
last spring. The Congress did not act on it this year. I hope
and believe they will act on it next year. It will work to
reduce teen pregnancy, to toughen child support enforcement, to
educate people more, and also to give them the support they need
for their kids if they go to work. And we will ask Congress to
pass that plan.

In the meanwhile, we have to keep granting these
waivers. I saw when all of you were clapping before that you
actually know what a waiver is. If you know what a waiver is,
this is the largest group ever gathered in the history of the
United States that knew what a waiver was -- (laughter) -- which
is amazing to me. I mean, that's something which is truly
laudable. A waiver means that the federal government has a bunch
of rules and regulations it ought not to have to tell you not to
do things you ought to be able to do, but we'll let you do it
anyway. (Applause.) That's what a waiver is. (Applause.)

And today I guess the most important thing I have to
announce is that I'm going to give one of those waivers to New
York for your welfare reform proposal. (Applause.)

I believe very strongly in this. Everybody talks
about welfare reform, but some people do it, and some people just
talk about it. I want you to have a chance to prove that jobs
first works. I want you to have a chance to prove that you can
either move 21,000 families off of welfare or keep them from
going on in the first place. I want you to have a chance to
prove what I know that most people are on welfare want to work if
it will work for them in their family situation. And so that's
what this welfare reform waiver will do. And I know you will
make the most of it.

I want to say again, this administration is
dedicated to partnership. I am a Democrat by heritage, instinct
and conviction, but I don't believe the national government has
all the answers. I believe that we need a smaller, but more
effective national government. I think that we need more
activism at the grass-roots level. Tomorrow I'm going to
Massachusetts to sign an education bill that clears a way for all
states a lot of the rules and regulations that kept people from
educating our children, especially our poor children as well as
they are capable of doing. This is a direction we must continue.

The last thing I want to say is that this is not
entirely a job for government, and attitude and personal conduct
count. You know, those kids that beat up that New York city
transit detective the other night, they should have been home.
They shouldn't have been out on the street beating him up.
There's nothing I can do as President to change that. But all of
us together, if we talk about the responsibilities of parents and
neighborhoods and community groups, if we take some of that crime
money and use it to provide opportunities for kids to go
someplace constructive late at night and to have role models that
are positive role models, if they don't have a home to go home
to, that will make a difference.

And that's something you have to do. That's
something you have to do. We need more people who will do what
those two men did on the Upper East Side yesterday when they put
their own lives at risk to help that man who was stabbed at the
automated teller machine and then go get the people who stabbed
him. That's what America ought to be about. We ought to lift
people like that up, we ought to follow them, and we ought to do
what they do. (Applause.) That's the last point I want to make
to you. None of this is going to work unless most of us have our
heads on straight.

I've become a friend of Ken Burns, the wonderful
filmmaker who did the series on the Civil War and did the
baseball series. And so I watched it all. It's the only
baseball I got this year. (Laughter.) Reich is going to fix
that for next year -- (laughter and applause) -- or he'll need
three boxes to get up here when he comes back. (Laughter.)

But listen to this. Listen to what your Governor
said in the baseball film. Baseball -- Mario Cuomo is talking
about why he always liked Joe DiMaggio. He said, always you look
for heroes. Always the people look up to see something that
represents them to something that is larger than them. And, if
it's perfect, something they might become.

Well, we can't all be Joe DiMaggio, but we could
have all done what those guys did at the teller machine yesterday
-- every one of us. And we can all take one kid in trouble and
give that boy or girl somebody to look up to. And we can all do
less bellyaching and more visionary talk about the future.
(Applause.)

And we can -- and every one of us, including me --
every one of us could spend a little less time placing blame and
a little more time assuming responsibility. That is what is
great about this country. (Applause.)

And I just want to leave you with this thought:
When President Aristide went back to Haiti this weekend, there
were all these Haitian people in the street with these little
signs with their messages on it. And the most frequent message
was, in Creole, a simple "Thank you, America." And if you had
seen just the eyes, the faces of our young men and women down
there in uniform who brought them their freedom back, some of
them Haitian Americans, Americans of all different races and
sizes and both genders, it would be impossible for you not to
want to do whatever you could to make this country and this state
what it ought to be.

So the Governor will try to do his part, I'll try to
do mine. If you do yours, the 21st century will be the best time
this country ever had.